How can it run off the grid? (Well, unless you put a nuclear reactor in the basement, that is)

How can it collect light which isn't there?

Stacking plants, even as a "greenhouse" is stupid. Leaves are opaque solar collectors, and as you drive by your typical farm, you don't see dirt, EVERYTHING is covered with leaves. Going up a second level, uhh, you fail, totoally, completely, and utterly.

And even if mythical stacking in a greenhouse would work, you'd only go up 2 or 3 levels, top.

A vertical farm would be a criminal waste of electricity. A farm is effectively a solar collector which converts sunlight to plant material. Stacking up a "vertical farm", you might as well put your grow rooms anywhere and stick to pot, as it is the only economical crop to grow under artifical light.

Rooftop gardens are another story, but they are actually really costly for the food you get. There is a huge benefit to specialization in farming, so unless you like gardening, a rooftop garden is going to do far less for the environment than rooftop solar cells will do.

To me, this says "important != good"

It just looks like a random mural someone put up, because, well, it IS a random mural.

I wouldn't look twice, simply because well, yawn.

And whats so suprising about people getting from pt A to pt B (be it a DC metro or whatever) not stopping for some random out of place "cultural appreciation".

Also, I call shenanigans because books aren't good insulation anyway compared to other options.

Since its really only about R-1 or R-2 per inch, even if you COMPLETELY covered your walls, 100% with books, thats really only about R-4 worth of insulation.

Which is frankly, pathetic.

Remove your bookshelves, and put a 1/2 inch polyeurathane expaned panel behind it, and you get better insulation than if the ENTIRE shelf was full 100%.

CPT Tim: Do you usually have just a single Torrent being transferred or many torrents?

If its the latter, the "fuck with the speed" will probably persist, as what you are doing is very unfair to other TCP flows, and "fuck with the speed" sounds like they've finally started traffic shaping.

Please contact me (nweaver@gmail.com), as I have some more questions for you.

Additionally, comcast claimed that it was only RST-injecting the upload streams, which, if true, should have very little effect on your performance.

Notice the fine print: They aren't saying they are ending interference with P2P, they are saying they will stop treating BitTorrent differently then other heavy transfers.

Which is a Good Thing, IMO, and I'm happy to have been proven wrong (I thought the P2P vs ISP war was going to heat up further.)

However, a guess: it may be a consequence of improved traffic shaping: they are already starting to prioritize short connections ("Speed boost", which is being very heavily advertised in this area).

You don't NEED to do RST injections if you can take the 1% heavy-users and traffic shape them down to a reasonable level when there's congestion. RST injection is very crude traffic management compared to the alternatives.

It also allows the ISP to deal with the cost externalities indirectly, because now the 90% don't complain as much about bad performance when they want to surf the net.

Finally, there is NOTHING in this that says they have to treat BitTorrent UPLOADS as special, just "not different from youtube".

Comcast has repeatedly claimed that they are only killing "leeches/seeds", flows which upload vastly more than they download. If Comcast instead just shapes all large uploads, this will have effectively the same effect, without the visible political repercussions.

Likewise, if ALL ISPs agressively shape uploads, this kills the P2P business model nearly as sure as anything else.

Also, the lack of topological awareness does hurt BitTorrent, as well as the lack of cacheability. If the ISP is able to say that
a) BitTorrent-type protocols can stay in my local loop and
b) These flows are ones I CAN cache without being sued

BitTorrent type flows become far less objectionable.

The XO opening could be made from ANNOYNG to "Piece of cake" by embossing a couple of ikea-style icons in the lid.

Actually, what really make it look bad is Virginia Tech crowing about it!

"Young lady, around this house we obey the laws of Thermodynamics"

The claims are outright fraud, and would only work if 2 + 2 = 400...

Here's the whole math:

0lbs == 22.6 kg
4 ft == 1.21 m

Potential Energy = mgh = 22.6 kg * 1.21 m * 9.8 m/s^2 ~= 270 J

Power = energy/time = 270 / (60 minutes/hour * 60 seconds/minute * 4 hours) = .019 Watts.

Assume 100% conversion of that power into visible light (a PERFECT lamp) is 683 lumens/watt. So this would be 12 Lumens of output.

A typical 40W bulb outputs 500 lumens!

So the design is a FRAUD, it CAN'T WORK! In order to get the 500 lumens of output, with theoretically perfect efficiency, it either needs 40x the weight (so a TON of weight, literally), 40x the drop (so a 160 foot fall), or can only operate for 6 minutes, and this would be with a perfectly, 100% efficient conversion of the potential energy into power and the power into illumination.

Its not a green design, its outright snake-oil, and if it worked as advertised it would violate the laws of physics.

Thats not a moon, thats a space station

THis is what I emailed to the contact link:

One thought.

The stated reason is to free up the prize money for better uses around the institution. This is eminently sensible.

However, rather than discontinuing the Million Dollar challenge, have you considered the possibility of increasing the size by an order of magnitude, by arranging for an insurance policy instead of a trust fund?

For example, Berkshire-Hathaway has long specialized in long-odd, huge payout insurance policies (eg, there was a contest that Pepsi Cola ran about a decade ago, with a theoretical billion dollar prize, backed by a Berkshire-Hathaway insurance policy.)

It is probably worth investigating whether the $1M trust fund could be split in half, with $500K for other operations, and $500K to buy a suitably large ($10M? More?) insurance policy, especially now that there is an established record.

If you think the charlitans get pressure refusing a $1M prize attempt, how do you think they would react to a $10M prize?

Actually, reading more, I stand corrected.

With a warrant, the police CAN make you unlock a door, because that is physical posession of an object (physical evidence).

However, opening a safe also conveys the testimony that you knew the combination, so it is considered a testimonial act and IS protected by the 5th ammendment.

Not only will this not go unappealed, even as a civil libertarian I don't think it should stand.

With a lawful warrant, the police can make you unlock a door or open your safe. Why should your digital data be different?

Daemon etc...

Not to get involved in an off-topic flame war, but SF has one of the BIGGEST homeless problems, and at the same time tries to help the most.

You've never walked through the bad parts of Golden Gate Park, have you?

Such ordinances are necessary and need to be enforced if you don't want your parks to become homeless camps.

Here in the bay area, a lot of people have just resorted to designing benches with internal armrests, so you CAN'T lay down on them.

Honda is the same way in the car business...

Small (Fit)
Medium (Civic)
Large (Accord)
Small SUV (CR-v)
Small work truck (Element)
Large SUV (pilot)
Minivan (Odyssey)
Pickup (Ridgeline, HA)
Sportscar (S2000)

and that is IT. Even within a car, it is just 1-4 trim levels and no real options.

Simplicity sells.

The problem is, Steve Jobs has no choice...

It IS cyncial and manipulative, but it is also necessary for him.

The iPod has great video capability, but nothing to WATCH on it. People have these piles of DVDs, and keep buying more.

You should, and there is no technical reason why not, have iTunes rip DVDs and shove them on your iPod (and allow you to watch them on the plane without burning battery life spinning the disk around).

But to do so would violate the DMCA, because there is some form of magical copyright control. So if Apple did that, they would get sued and sued bigtime by the studios.

This would give them the opportunity going forward, and would also eliminate the trivial "check the CD out from the library and pop it into iTunes" problem the music industry claims to have.

The root problem is the DMCA anti-circumvention prohibition.

I find the lack of WiFi disturbing.

EVDO is a horribly overpriced way to move bits, when adding a WiFi connection (and not charging transport charges for WiFi data) would make it vastly more appealing.

$2 per RSS feed? That means my web browser's RSS stream would cost $40-60/month and growing! F-that.

Actually, air like that is pretty good insulation even.

The only thing better would be if they made it a full vaccume bottle, then it would be amazingly insulating.

Its a sad statement when I go "Damn, why didn't someone do this diagram earlier, and is there an X-box version?"

One comment, based on Carlin's "7 dirty words" decision, Howl really is a clear-cut case, there is a nice F-bomb in it:

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly
motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,

and

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole
boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream
Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in
Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!

Under all previous FCC precident, thats a huge fine per station per occurance for the F-bomb, not to mention the other in the 7-dirty-words. Multiply it across the entire Pacifica network and you are looking at a pretty penny for a public radio network.

A pretty penny which they would probably LOSE. The standard for public airwaves is very different from print in all the court precident. Resurrecting/revisiting the 7 dirty words decision would be a very tough one, even for such a case of obvious literature like Howl.

If they bleeped the F-bomb, the FCC would ignore it, because it would be a case the FCC would probably lose.

How is this better than the Annoy-A-Tron?

http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/8c52/

How is this "art" and not "squatting"?

Just get a prepaid SIM for an unlocked GSM phone at the airport. I managed to get an unlocked RAZR for $130 which I use as my travel phone (as a bonus, the RAZR can be charged off a computer's USB port).

Or perhaps try: http://www.maxroam.com/

true, I use "Down on the ground" as an example. You would have to look up which is the proper procedure (down on the ground or hands in the air).

But if a suspect is wearing one of these...

http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2005/11/14/15nbomber_narrowweb__300x343,0.jpg

Or if the officer can reasonably believe the suspect is wearing something like that, if the suspect doesn't do EXACTLY what the responding officer says, the officer really has no choice but to shoot the suspect in the head.

So the officer's statement, although very crude and tactless, really is correct.

The problem I have is so many of her supports, and so many of the commenters here, view the entire SITUATION as an overreaction, rather than just the prosecution.

Look at your OWN original posting. Once update 3 came up, it should have been clear that "Down on the ground..." was probably not a police overreaction.

As for that T-shirt, I would HOPE that the TSA would give a very hard time to anyone who had something like that, or the breadboard pictured, in their carry-on baggage. It may not be a crime, but it would be criminally incompetent if the TSA just happily gave that stuff a free pass.

And also remember, if this indeed can be called "incredibly stupid" on her part, we as a society prosecute "incredibly stupid" acts all the time. I'm just waiting for the inevitable community service pleabargan.

Please, people, I'm sick of the blind "the 'security X' is an overreaction" movement.

The PROSECUTION is an overreaction. She did nothing that warrants prosecution, and there is no way to call what she wore a "hoax device".

But the reaction to her outfit was not an overreaction, but by-the-book proper policy. Google image search for "suicide vest". Think that "this is what the security officers are TRAINED to look for".

Now remember, they have probably NEVER seen a breadboard in their lives. How is "Down on the ground NOW" not the proper reaction?

The Star Johnson case should not be taken as an exemplar, compared with stupid things like the homemade iPod charger, but even then, the items they are being TRAINED to look for are things that are tangled-messes of electronics etc.

Remember, real bombs look remarkably like these things people are complaining about the TSA complaining about:

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en-commons/thumb/1/14/300px-Trip-wire_pipe_bomb.jpg

And an Iraqi IED kit:
http://ncmuseumofhistory.org/images/prss_rl_calltoarms2.gif

Unless it leans, or it has a LOT of battery mass up near the nose and down low, it might be a bit roll-happy.

The wide stance helps, but with such a wide front, why not just have 4 wheels?

Lets see what a real suicide vest looks like...

http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2005/11/14/15nbomber_narrowweb__300x343,0.jpg

You know, that shirt is "close enough" that to wear it to an airport you have to be, well, not thinking well, and "DOWN ON THE GROUND OR WE SHOOT YOU IN THE HEAD" is unfortunately the right response to someone wearing that to the airport.

I hope the charges will either be dropped or pled out to a slap on the wrist, but airport security response to this was not an overreaction.

It was shown on CNN, does ANYONE have a screen capture...

I have a feeling a nice photo of the hoodie & wiring will easily say to 90% of the people either "she's lucky she's not dead" or "gah, what an overreaction".

But until we SEE the device, we can't say one way or the other.

Screen capture?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15012105/ is the current press information

http://stars.mit.edu/me.html is apparently the suspect's home page.

We need to see a photo of the device before we pass judgement

Actually, this is a very big deal, mostly because one of the biggest reasons people will ditch a provider is because they don't get good reception at home.

Just AT&T, please follow suit because I'm gonna get an iphone in January...

Its hardly new.

I was in Finland, and a lot of the taxis are E-class mercedes, which use this exact style of spedometer, complete with display in the middle for stereo and other information.

Why do you need a unicorn chaser for a NSFW Unicorn post? Isn't the Second Life unicorn post its own unicorn chaser?

Actually, its far older, dating back to the famous CalTech Card Prank of the 1961 Rose Bowl

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/pranks/rosebowl.html